Latest / UK Column Radio / Conformity Colleges- The Occupation And Destruction Of The Academy By The Radical Left

Transcript

Conformity Colleges- The Occupation And Destruction Of The Academy By The Radical Left · UK Column Radio

0:07
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to UK Column. I'm Ben Rubin and
0:12
I'm delighted to be joined today by David Barnheiser, who is the professor emeritus
0:21
of Law at Cleveland State University and the author of a new book called Conformity
0:28
Colleges, subtitled the Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America's Universities. Welcome
0:39
to the show, Professor Barnheiser. Thank you for coming me. David.
0:45
We're informal here at UK Column. Fantastic. So I'm going to start with
0:50
a quote from Nikita Krishtchev, the former leader of the Soviet Union, who
0:58
said, in an address to the American people it was broadcast to the American
1:02
paper in nineteen fifty seven, that your grandchildren will be Communists. Do you
1:07
think that he was right? I think there are groups that are trying to
1:11
make them communists. I think there are ones Marxist, MAOIs the like.
1:19
There are those groups. But he was completely wrong, because if we don't
1:25
change what's going on, we won't be much of anything politically except a bunch
1:30
of people fighting with each other or trying to steal everything they can. I
1:38
mean, I've said, let me add one thing. I taught in the
1:42
UK three times Westminster University in London, and I was a senior research fellow
1:48
at the University of London. Well, the last time I was there,
1:53
I had a flat near the British Museum and would go over there because I
2:00
like to look at where Karl Marx he had an area where he wrote Dost
2:06
Capital, et cetera. And people have asked me about that, and my
2:10
answer is many things that Marx said were accurate as a social analyst. The
2:20
thing that destroyed his complete system is he had a completely flawed ideal of human
2:28
nature. You know, the proletariat could not govern themselves and everybody else.
2:34
That was his idea. Ultimately, the state withers away that you could you
2:38
could do that. The reality is that people have a selfish and I love
2:46
people, I mean, but people have a selfish, greedy, envious,
2:51
mean streak. We'll have something of that in US and different things can bring
2:54
it bring it out. And you know, the idea there are no good
3:00
that of communist states, and there haven't been. There have been some experiments
3:04
on very small levels in the US and elsewhere, but even they end up
3:10
after a generation, they end up gone, and then you get to China,
3:15
you get to you get to Russia. They are not communist states.
3:21
It doesn't matter what they say. They're not Marxist states, they're not communist
3:23
states. They're gang states. A small type group of people use the rhetoric
3:30
to gain power because they create, as you see in this book, they
3:35
create an enemy. And in China they call it class, and in the
3:39
same in Russia. In the US right now we're calling it race and animosity
3:46
and white people. And so it's a form of deliberate creation of an enemy
3:51
because a revolution needs an enemy to stir people up and to fight against,
3:58
and so that generates their movement. But the problem is, even if they
4:02
succeed by and take power, there's nothing they have to offer except an organized
4:10
criminal conspiracy for the guys who took over, and everybody else has to serve
4:15
their interests. That's not communism. So, you know, Chris jeff was
4:18
totally wrong. But that's the kind of rhetoric and an overstated ideal or just
4:25
propaganda that various people engage in. Absolutely, I think that it seems clear
4:31
that the ambition has been there to lure the West, the US the other
4:43
Western nations. You can certainly see in this country into communism, into a
4:49
form of totalitarian government. But I think that you're analysis of Marx is absolutely
4:55
correct, that he didn't really understand human nature, and I think that these
4:58
systems are inhuman. Actually, what leans what they're trying to impose on us
5:03
now from above is any human set of ideologies and systems. But I would
5:11
add to that this. I mean, if you look at the rhetoric from
5:15
China, if you look at the rhetoric from the more fanatical Islamic theocratic regimes
5:23
and all the gorilla groups that are that are going on. And I'm not
5:26
making a statement against Islam. I'm saying the people, they're an example of
5:30
when fanatics get controlled, they stir up anger, they still stir up patriot
5:35
they take over, and they have bad intentions. Now outside the western Western
5:42
Europe and America and Canada, Japan, to some extent, Australia, India
5:47
a little bit, although I don't know whether they'll ever get there act completely
5:50
together because of the population dramatics. But outside of that, there is a
5:57
concerted and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I have to say if you
6:00
look at what's going on in the US and in Europe, it is a
6:05
deliberate attempt to sabotage the fundamental institutions and ideals of Western nations because they're completely
6:15
incompatible with the other systems hold on power. They want to weaken us to
6:20
the extent that they It's not just a national thing, it's an international group
6:27
of people deliberately trying to weaken democratic states. You talk about obviously, the
6:34
subtitle of the title of the book is Conformity Colleges, and the subtitle talks
6:39
about the death of dissent and intellectual creativity in American universities. But the problem
6:46
runs much deeper than that, doesn't it. Absolutely absolutely. I'm going to
6:50
show you one thing that I just happen to have one on one on my
6:56
two things. This is a book can you see Uncapling America? I wrote
7:02
it four years ago. It has about six hundred examples across every institution journalism,
7:09
business, government, public public activities, and so on. And what
7:15
it means is you can see if you look at a pattern, it began
7:19
in the universities and then they fed it off into the rest of the system,
7:25
got the people hired with the same set of beliefs that we were just
7:29
talking about, and so they're trying to undermine the traditional ideals of education and
7:36
damage our mind. It's basically damage our mind. Mao took over. He
7:42
wrote something in nineteen thirty seven, a little piece nineteen thirty seven, when
7:46
he was really starting to launch his great revolution, and he said, in
7:51
the classical sense, liberalism is bad. It can never be part of our
7:58
revolution because in that people think and they talk, and they criticize, and
8:03
they look at the reality of systems. And if we have that, the
8:07
people will not obey us. And so liberalism is bad. It's an evil
8:13
because it gets in the way the thought process and the ability to critique and
8:18
to think and to challenge and to interact is something that is anathema in these
8:24
other nations that we're tie every damn one of them. If you do that,
8:28
I mean, their thought crimes, right. You can't insult the regime,
8:33
you can't question the regime. And that is what's going on. They
8:37
are teaching the same thing in America, and I know in Canada and the
8:41
UK a lot of the same kind of stuff is going on. In terms
8:46
of us trying to force people's minds into one little, rigid collective box where
8:56
discussing or challenging or questioning is actually even a crime. In some places in
9:03
China, questioning the regime can get you in prison. And I just saw
9:09
something in the UK from the UK the other day that a woman was reading
9:15
or asking questions around an abortion area about whether somebody really wanted to get that
9:24
in abortion and she was arrested. And that actually happened when last time I
9:31
lived in London too, there was a couple in one of the squares outside
9:35
our flat and they were hassled by the police because they were just holding signs
9:41
and their signs said think about it before I get an abortion. And that
9:46
became very very fundamental. That was offensive. You're not supposed to intrude on
9:50
people and make them feel bad. Yeah, I think it was she was
9:54
prying. I believe that the crime was crying. Yeah, absolutely, which
10:01
is even worse. Well quite yeah, absolutely, it's the pure essence of
10:07
a thought crime. I will say, it's a remarkable book that you've created,
10:13
you know more, all credit to you for putting it together. I
10:16
think that the I've not seen a more comprehensive list of examples anywhere else.
10:26
I mean, we're talking about issues that have been at the forefront of public
10:31
discourse for quite some time now. We've had people from Andrew bright part to
10:37
the David Horowitz to even Jordan Peterson actually in the early days of his career
10:41
talking about these issues. But the sheer volume of examples that you put together
10:50
here is absolutely, absolutely remarkable. I think the one that really jumped out
10:56
at me the most was the young woman who eight to North Korea in order
11:01
to migrate, Yeah, in order to migrate to the United States, and
11:05
and and and and basically saying, you're giving up your freedom. The reason
11:11
that I left North Korea was to get away from this, this atmosphere of
11:16
or of repression, and yet it seems to have taken route here in the
11:22
United States. Well, it definitely has you and me Park who the name
11:26
of the person you're talking about. I have such admiration for her, I
11:31
mean, but that's the thing, courage of the kind she shows. And
11:35
a number of people in the examples were ones who showed courage. I cited
11:41
and and and tried to honor them. In the beginning of that the problem
11:46
is so many people are either bought into it because they want to believe in
11:52
something and be part of something. And the rhetoric of these movements for people
11:56
who don't understand reality. They've all a certain group has always been subject to
12:03
capture by people that they take as profits or people who are really powerful speakers,
12:11
and they send them a message that captures their minds, so they believe
12:15
it. It's a nature of prophecy. It's the nature of the fact that
12:18
we need to believe in something that is we can be part of that that's
12:24
powerful, significant, and even more important than ourselves. So it's it's a
12:28
trap for people, and that's part of the what the movement is going on
12:33
now because they're using the same ideals that I and you I have no doubt
12:37
when we were raised freedom, opportunity, non discrimination, fairness, justice,
12:46
using that against they take that as their narrative and then project failures onto the
12:54
people they've identified as their enemies or opponents and say you're the biggest, you
13:00
should be ashamed, you're the racist. I mean the list of what counts.
13:05
I'm a civil rights lawyer all my life that way, I've represented so
13:07
many people. I've dealt with so many people who are minorities and ethnic and
13:13
racial and economic minorities. I know they are humans. They are good,
13:20
many of them good people. Some of them are evil. Some of them
13:22
were evil, but it's because of who they are as a person, having
13:26
nothing to do with their race or ethnicity, and they're just something made them
13:31
a bad person. That's the way it is. But so many people need
13:35
to believe that they become patsies or victims for those who know how to manipulate.
13:41
And that's where the pronouns, that's where the Orwellian narratives come in,
13:46
where they force a change in language. The linguists, the very good linguists.
13:52
Maybe fifty years ago Ruth Anshin brought it out and said, what people
13:58
don't understand is that humans do not simply use language. Humans are the language
14:09
they use. And now that's why so much of what's going on right now
14:13
is a deliberate manipulation of language. Things you're allowed to say, ways,
14:18
you're allowed, what you're mdon allowed to say. The idea in a critical
14:22
race theory that that you can't there are microaggressions, or that you have a
14:28
mind virus, that a white person has a mind virus that makes them a
14:31
racist. Automatic that's bullshit. Sorry for the language, it's total bullshit,
14:37
but it is a manipulation for people who don't have the time or experience or
14:43
contacts to actually understand other people that the kind of you be talking about.
14:48
They take it for granted because they don't. If they don't, then the
14:52
group they're they're at least in contact with, imposed shame shaming on them.
14:58
Then you're a sexist, you're misogynist, you're a bigot, you're a racist.
15:03
And that's the disgusting thing. They use the things we actually believe in
15:09
and have made progress on over over decades and decades since, particularly since the
15:13
nineteen fifties and sixties. I'm not saying there aren't a lot of problems before
15:18
that, and that's why I was a civil rights lawyer. That's why I
15:22
fought against them, so you know, so I'm not denying that there were
15:26
bad things. What I am saying is I am and many of the people
15:30
I deal with who are black or Chicano, Hispanic, et cetera, for
15:35
women, they understand the progress that have been that have been has been made,
15:39
and they they joy in it. I have a friend who was president
15:45
of is like my brother who's who was president of an historic black college and
15:50
university, and he was the president of it. And he said to me
15:54
when I was when he and I were on a panel doing doing a discussion
16:00
or so ago, he said, the problem with a lot of the critical
16:03
race theory is that virtually all of the people who are doing the leading,
16:07
they never actually had the experience, the real experience. I mean, he
16:14
grew up, you know, with the signs, you know, no blacks
16:18
here, no color it's here, no do that. He grew up with
16:21
that, and he saw how it was overcome so much, and he is
16:26
honest about that. And he said, the people who are leading this so
16:32
called revolution now don't really know much of anything about real discrimination. That they
16:38
only know what they've read in books that somebody else wrote since nineteen eighty one.
16:45
That that is the message of it. But then you go in and
16:48
you say, my lived experience, well, their lived experience is not you
16:53
know, it's totally subjective. It's not only totally subjective, it is deliberate
17:00
selected to give them an advantage. And I'll ever to seek power and a
17:04
shame people and claim that they were victims and they were wrong. It makes
17:08
perfect sense to me, and there's so much in there. And one of
17:12
the reasons why I think that they go after the young is because they have
17:15
a less nuanced understanding of reality. Ultimately, because you look when you actually
17:22
go and look at the application of something like critical race theory, I always
17:27
say, with critical race theory, you've got to break it down. Critical
17:32
means it's reductive and not generative. It never actually comes up with any solutions
17:37
or new ideas. Race means it's racist, so we've got to be careful
17:41
with that. And theory means it's an academic theory that unfortunately breaks when it
17:48
meets reality, like most many theories do. And yet these theories, these
17:53
academic tools, which are extremely crude, are being used to formulate policy,
18:03
to set the tone and direction of public discourse. And it's extraordinary that we've
18:10
even got to this point. This is really really fascinating to see what spurred
18:18
you. I mean, you said that you've been a civil rights lawyer for
18:22
for for decades now, and but what what what spurred you into into putting
18:27
together this this book and and and the previous book that you mentioned A moment
18:33
ago. I'm going to answer that. I add one more question. The
18:40
books I wrote. These books were in a deliberate sequence. The first book
18:47
in twenty nineteen, the Artificial Intelligence Contagion. The subtitle was can Democracy withstand
18:53
the imminent transformation of work wealth in the social order? And that it was
19:00
also you know, what is AI? What is robotics doing to us on
19:06
all the levels? What's what are the impacts of it in business and government?
19:11
And that? And it had the AI and the social the use of
19:15
the social media that it has allowed through the Internet is at the root of
19:21
the communications networks and the condemnation networks and the sharing of bad thoughts as well
19:27
as good thoughts. Uh. The people who actually started, you know,
19:32
created the algorithms on that they have recently, and Tim berners Lee, he
19:37
was one of the originals, Jeffrey Hinton and others. They have come out
19:41
and said, oh my god, we had no idea what we were creating.
19:45
We wanted it to be a powerful instrument of growth and justice and sharing
19:52
in democracies and enriching that and in fact, social media and I'm only digressing
19:57
on it because it's so fundament to what's going on social media is the way
20:03
that the manipulation is occurring because it allows instantaneous mobs, instantaneous condemnations, propaganda
20:12
distribution on a huge level. And so that's bad. But then the issue
20:21
is what's forred me to do that. It's like how people and like you
20:25
just responded, and a number of others have responded to the AI book and
20:30
the Uncanceling book and to this book the Conformity College. Is the idea is
20:34
that you said it a few moments ago. You see a piece here,
20:40
you hear a story here, you see a little bitty thing here, and
20:45
you say, oh, I didn't realize that's happening, But you don't have
20:48
a context. You know. The thing is the way it wasn't being shown
20:53
to people, just how sweeping, widespread, positive in terms of what it's
21:02
doing with people and harmful and destructive of our society. So I deliberately put
21:07
these sets of things together so that people would say, and it wasn't just
21:12
me saying, oh, this is what I think, this is what I
21:15
think, this is what I think. It is that this is just like
21:18
you own me park in the North Korean young woman. The people who have
21:26
lived it and have to go through it here or there or in the UK.
21:33
You have to understand how comprehensive it is. It is a total strategy
21:41
that's going on, and you can't fight it based only upon reacting to one
21:47
little little element of it. It's a total systemic takeover. It's starting and
21:53
there are However, there's something I've said to a variety of people, the
22:00
the issue would almost be done four years ago with COVID, and by that
22:07
I mean so much of it was concealed in the uncanceling America. You can
22:12
see in K through twelve education, the school boards, the teachers were told
22:17
basically to lie about what they were doing. Just keep doing it and we'll
22:22
say we're not doing it now. What happened with COVID, I mean it
22:27
was a complete life. What happened with COVID in the in the in home
22:30
projection, in zoom zoom teaching in the US, it was put into the
22:37
homes, the lessons, and then the parents. What occurred is the parents,
22:45
usually women, who were taking the educational process as valid and trustworthy,
22:52
and then all of a sudden they'd walk into the room that the teaching session
22:57
was occurring with their children or child, and they would hear what's being being
23:02
said, and they would hear that it's politicized. They would hear the extreme
23:07
statements that are made and that were in that their little kids were being being
23:11
inundated with. And that's that's what led to a lot of the the expanding
23:21
resistance, where now that's what revealed, revealed what's occurring and the idea with
23:26
each again back to Mao, but also Hitler youth and the the young communists
23:33
and the like. In that situation, Mao particularly explicitly said, get them
23:40
while they're young, you get inside their brains, because, as you just
23:45
said a few moments ago, it is a system where young kids and young
23:51
people are seeking answers and the teachers are authority figures. They have power in
23:56
that it's not it's suppose poly objective, but they're giving them that. And
24:02
then all of a sudden, the teacher is actually not all of them.
24:07
There are a lot of really good teachers, but a lot of those are
24:10
resigning and retiring, leaving the field because they can't take it anymore. To
24:15
the fanatics, were the brainwashed teachers and administrators who are working on their children's
24:22
minds. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm sorry it is not.
24:27
That is what's going on. No, absolutely, I think one of the
24:33
most remarkable things of the whole COVID era was seeing really an inversion of the
24:40
relationship between the teachers and the students. The teachers are supposedly there to protect
24:47
the students, and yet the zeal with which the teaching profession and the unions
24:52
in this country, and I'm sure it was the same in the US,
24:56
we was so happy to go along with Lockdown's masking mandates, essentially essentially to
25:03
protect themselves at the expense of the children. I mean, it was quite
25:07
a remarkable thing to watch, And actually this reminds me of I'm going to
25:15
misquote David Horowitz, but I watched a totally gave a few days ago to
25:22
recording from twenty fifteen. It was about a book he wrote called The Black
25:26
Book of the American Left I believe it was called. And his view is
25:30
that to be a leftist you have to be dishonest at a fundamental level about
25:34
everything that your beliefs represent. And there are a number of examples that you
25:41
pull out in the book. I mean, really, actually, we could
25:44
probably say all of the examples where the teachers the academics promoting these ideologies and
25:52
the interventions in the systems that they're part of in order to rebalance them towards
25:57
the oppressed students versus the oppressive students are actually extraordinarily damaging to the people that
26:06
they say that they're trying to protect. And I would continue that. I
26:10
mean, first of all, it's disgusting, it's dishonest. They're supposed to
26:15
be teaching children truth. But see they're such fanatics. But a lot of
26:21
it is just like, I'll give you one little little idea years ago,
26:27
because European deconstructionists had a lot to do. A lot of what their analysis
26:37
was was this is how you take over a system. Deconstruct You disassemble,
26:42
critique, as you said, the fundamental values of that, and you so
26:47
you attack. And they went through that, and they were Marxists, no
26:51
question about it, many of them, though in the US it was the
27:00
University of Chicago professor stated she had looked at that, and she had read
27:07
their articles, and the reality is that they didn't even that. European philosophers
27:12
and analysts actually tend to make fun of American ones because they say, They
27:18
say the words, and it sounds good, but they don't even understand what
27:22
they're talking about. They don't understand the context. They don't know understand I
27:26
mean, And they never think other than their effort to gain power and to
27:30
take it over. They never, as you said, a moment when you're
27:34
talking about the critic, the critique, the critical racer, they never really
27:41
think about what occurs if they win, or what occurs what kind of system
27:47
do they build? When I talk about critique, I'm a critic. I
27:52
criticize many things, but there are two things. Critique is to take apart
27:57
in an honest way. Synthesis is the other side of critique that we all
28:04
have. If we're being honest intellectuals or even honest politicians, if there is
28:11
such a thing, If we're being honest in it, our job is not
28:15
only to criticize and take apart or disassemble. It's to show a path to
28:21
something better that is workable and consistent with humans and human societies. And that's
28:30
what they don't do, even if they are right in their critique, and
28:33
they don't they lie about that. Critical race theory. Brett Stevens of The
28:40
New York Times when it came out in the sixteen nineteen project, they said,
28:44
critical race theory. This sounds good, but it's a theory in search
28:48
of evidence, and it doesn't have the evidence. It just has the claims,
28:52
the assertion absolutely, which is why they so censorious, because when you
29:00
actually introduced real data and evidence, then the claims fall apart, which is
29:04
why they don't allow any new ideas into their worldview because it falls falls to
29:10
pieces very quickly. Yeah. This, I mean one of the one of
29:15
the most remarkable things is this assault on meritocracy. And you cite an example
29:21
of the American Medical Association, you know, the people that regulate or I
29:26
don't know exactly what their role is within within the medical system in the US,
29:30
but that I've certainly heard of them before, and I think that they
29:33
play quite a prominent role. I'm sure you can fill me in on the
29:37
details. But essentially, you've got a body that is responsible for setting standards
29:42
for clinicians saying now that it's going to abandon meritocracy and move to a system
29:48
which is about addressing supposed social justice issues. I mean, this is absolutely
29:53
remarkable abdication of responsibility to fulfill some kind of political ideology. It's madness,
30:03
it is, it is, but it's madness that so many I would call
30:11
it the Biden Area era politicians have accepted as a mission because it's not just
30:19
the AMA, which is a guiding organization but not with great teeth. But
30:25
what happened after the AMA said that is that there are now well over one
30:30
hundred medical schools who have created mandatory DEI courses in their curriculum, and so
30:41
they have bought into it completely. And that is frightening, particularly you know,
30:48
you know, there are a lot of bad doctors already. What we
30:52
have now, all right, we've certainly learned that over the past few years
31:00
the same thing is going on in another thing that threatens to destroy the economy.
31:06
And I used to work for Natural Resources Defense Counsel in the Washington d
31:10
C and international environmental stuff years ago and did a lot of work on global
31:15
warming as it was named at that time. It was clear early on even
31:19
that sure you had to be there were changes, because the Earth goes through
31:23
cycles, the Sun goes recycles. Humans could be contributing to in a very
31:30
small way to those changes. But it changed from when I was working on
31:37
it being something that you had to try to figure it out what was really
31:41
going on. They used computer models that many of which were totally flawed with
31:45
their assumptions, and used testing locations where it generated an unrealistically high heat index
31:56
because they put it in places that really got massive amounts of sun and even
32:02
on tarred roofs in cities and heat you know, actually were heat sinks in
32:07
it. And since then, something that should have been looked at intelligently,
32:15
creatively, analytically, factually, etc. Has become a un driven and fanatic
32:23
driven crusade where they're still not willing to hear anything contradictory. So it's the
32:31
mindset, and we talked about how it infiltrates everything. The lack of ability
32:37
to think and the willingness to think has created a mindset for so many people
32:44
that they're just happy to be part of a crusade, and that's one of
32:49
the problems. How do you change it? And we've experienced it in many
32:52
ways. People who don't want to think aren't going to think. Absolutely.
32:58
It's in all that on truth ultimately, and it's coming at it from many
33:04
different angles. I think one of the things that I find most remarkable.
33:07
I mean, we talked about how counterproductive a lot of this stuff is for
33:10
the populations that it's supposed to be helping. Supposedly. It's also just incredibly
33:15
insulting. I think, you know, this idea that meritocracy should be abandoned,
33:21
and also this concept which I just find staggering as someone who has Afro
33:25
Caribbean family members, that things like hard work and honesty and timeliness these are
33:34
deemed as white values that give us some kind of unfair advantage that need to
33:39
be got rid of rather than promoted. You know, it's it's what do
33:46
they call it, the soft bigotry of lowered expectations? I think is the
33:51
term. Yes, it has, and that's absolutely true. And I've been
33:55
I think, I mean, I've worked and done things all over the world
34:00
and with people from all over and been in thirty five countries and the like.
34:07
And I'll put it this way, there's a reason that so many people
34:14
from those other countries want to come to Western Europe and to the UK and
34:17
to Canada and to the US. There's a reason because the awful people who
34:24
created those systems, you know us, you know, the awful people who
34:30
in our ancestors created those systems, did a hell of a lot better job
34:36
than virtually all the other countries. And once you're talking about it's one thing
34:42
to have a small scale island community. Okay, they have their own problems,
34:46
that's a nation that way. But when you get to the level of
34:50
complexity and diversity that we are experiencing now, you have to have people who
34:58
you either have like the US you could say is made up of god knows
35:04
how many different tribes tribal groups. So if you if you emphasize tribalism and
35:12
identity, you disintegrate the fundamental elements of a nation, of a complex nation.
35:20
And we don't. We are not dealing with the fact of what does
35:24
diversity and complexity do. If part of that is to make you hate the
35:31
thing that created it and that made you want to be there, it disintegrates
35:38
it. And that's what's happening to the cultures in many of our countries.
35:43
And it's a deliberate thing because selling the idea we're supposed to be supposed to
35:47
just value identity, narrow identity analyzes over a sense of community. What they're
35:57
doing is isolating into collectives, small you know, tight fanatical collectives instead,
36:05
and they have lost the whole feeling of what a community, a diverse community
36:09
needs, which are many of the values you just talked about in merit.
36:15
You know, these people, the people have to be fed, right,
36:16
So you want people who actually can create the crops. You want people dedicated
36:22
to hard work. You want people doing all this stuff because the economic demands
36:28
on countries of our kind are so massive, as you keep saying, people,
36:31
where the hell is the trillions of dollars in the US is spending coming
36:36
from? It's this specific reason we're dealing with inflation right now and fighting over
36:42
all these things. They're using the money and it's not money from production,
36:45
it's money from printing excess paper, you know. That's that's what's going on.
36:52
So we have to come to grips, and I don't know that we
36:58
can with how you recreate a sense of community in an extremely diverse system that
37:07
we still want to think of as a democratic republic that allows growth, expansion,
37:13
opportunity, justice and all those things. Yes, and what we're looking
37:20
at here in the US, it's in all on the constitution itself. Right,
37:24
This is we talked about, meaning we talked about language, We've talked
37:30
about this version of truth, and ultimately, what it seems that this is
37:36
heading towards is a fundamental assault on the foundation of the American nation itself.
37:46
Couldn't say it any better, is exactly that. And you know, I
37:52
don't want to be American exceptionalism or anything, but I will say, if
37:58
we don't get it together, the whole world screw. I agree, I
38:01
absolutely agree with that. I think one of the most interesting things observing how
38:09
these people operate, because I mean, obviously, being in the UK,
38:14
we keep a close eye on what's happening in the United States, but were
38:17
experiencing many of the same trends here, right. The same things are happening
38:22
in our universities, the same things are happening in our political institutions. And
38:25
one of the things that I've noticed is that these political ideologues seem to think
38:32
that the political games are the difficult and the important things, and that everything
38:39
else is secondary to that. So they'll take over an institution, but they
38:45
don't understand what was required to build the institution in the first place, and
38:51
actually the process of taking control of the universities, the school system, the
38:57
country is actually destroying the thing that they say that they want to take control
39:01
of. They're actually killing through the world. You are totally right, and
39:08
that's I would put it this. I know it sounds extreme, and I'm
39:13
not an extremist. Dammit. They they they are destroyers. They are not
39:20
builders. And since they their thing is to is to undermine all those institutions.
39:29
Building those institutions. How many centuries did it take in Europe to build
39:36
the and how many deaths from wars and everything else to build the idea of
39:42
a secular still value value carrying state and community, hundreds and hundreds of years
39:52
and wars, And that is where they came. And to bring all those
39:59
the writing I use to teach a course in philosophy that went back to the
40:02
Greeks, came up through the Catholic Church and Islam, and it was very
40:07
diverse course because I wanted people to understand that the systems that matter are not
40:15
just created overnight. And if you destroy something, particularly when that destruction is
40:22
based upon creating an enemy class and saying it is these are bad institutions,
40:31
merit, Oh my god, what would you do that when it's founded on
40:35
that, you can't put it back together. So I can just see one
40:38
day, you know, a little bit late, they come in, they
40:40
said they're on top, they're getting annointed, and they look in the mirror
40:45
and say, okay, now what do we do? They have no clue.
40:51
They are not builders. They are destroyers. They call it transformation,
40:58
you know, disintegration everything, but they are destroyed. They're not builders.
41:00
They don't know how to build things. How much of this do you view
41:05
as symptomatic of an increased detachment from from God and from religion. Yeah,
41:17
I would say this it is. It's not a detachment, it is a
41:23
replacement, just like with Marxism Maoism. It is to create a cult,
41:30
which is at root a religious cult. Marx may have said, you know,
41:37
the religion is the open of the people, but nobody bothered really understanding
41:42
that. All he did was flip flip the coin and create a new opia.
41:46
So which was communism or Marxism. You know, So that's what's going
41:52
on. People need to have governors on the behavior in the sense of that,
42:02
and I don't mean there's supposed to be you know, you could say
42:05
governors and collectivism is a governor. That's not what I'm talking about what I'm
42:09
talking about. They need something that sets a standard that of good and bad
42:17
and and it has some deep moral sense inside them. And because and we
42:25
won't even talk about morality anymore. And so what has occurred. People are
42:32
so overwhelmed by the world that they seek anything that seems to hold for them
42:40
the promise of I don't mean selfish power there the selfish, fanatical power ideologues,
42:49
but the but they holds something that makes them feel meaningful, makes them
42:57
feel bigger than themselves, makes them feel part of some we talked about the
43:01
loss of community. Well, they're trying to recreate their own community. And
43:06
the problem is the people who are doing that are doing it using statements and
43:10
things that are not healthy for a community. People need to understand that there
43:17
is good and bad, there is right and wrong, and we have to
43:21
agree as a community on what it is. I'm not saying it automatically that
43:24
everybody knows, but we have to be able to say this is what.
43:30
And I used to actually funny on that. I used to actually partly in
43:35
my philosophy class, bring out this terrible, tragic thing which is called the
43:39
Ten Commandment, and said, you go through this and you say, I
43:45
don't care whether you believe in that God or not. You look at this.
43:49
What it really does is set out a formula for a community that doesn't
43:54
destroy itself, eat itself up, cannibalize it. So if it sets some
44:00
intelligent human rules about the limits on certain kind of behaviors and the things you
44:07
should think about, now, doesn't that be the Ten Commandments? I'm saying
44:09
this is what it was for that for those communities at the time, they
44:14
adopted in a powerful way the Ten Commandments. We need something that holds us
44:20
accountable, and we are the ones who are the only ones who can hold
44:22
us really accountable in the deep moral sense. But if we don't believe in
44:28
anything strongly enough, then we're never accountable, which is where you go.
44:32
For the politicians. They're only accountable accountability for in the US is whether they
44:39
get elected or don't get elected. That's it, you know, And they
44:45
will lie and cheat and do anything in order to get elected. They're accountable
44:51
to the donus. I think that that's the exactly regardless of what they pretend
44:57
to before. You're right, Yes, I like the tanker moments. I'm
45:01
a fan of the beattitudes as well. I think that blessed are the peacemakers.
45:07
If you want a principle that's a good that's a good place to start.
45:12
And actually the reintroduction of this kind of thing into our public discourse and
45:16
into the education system, I think would be would be extremely beneficial. And
45:22
that's not some kind of dogmatic statement. I think that, particularly in this
45:25
country. There is one thing to add to that. I'm not sure there's
45:31
any system that doesn't have some version of the Golden rule in it. However,
45:38
phrase standing for the proposition. Proposition you treat other people the way you
45:45
want to be treated, and unless you're a nut case in a massacres don't
45:49
want to be tortured or something like that, that gives you a frame of
45:52
reference that you can say, this is how I should treat other human beings
45:58
because it is how I wish to be treated. And that sounds like a
46:02
pretty darnal general statement of human nature. It helps overcome because you know you
46:10
don't want be treated badly, so it helps overcome that little dark evil in
46:16
us. But that one thing I would say, since you mentioned constitution,
46:23
I always say this. James Madison, one of the Framers. You look
46:29
at him. He emphasized in the Federalist papers, the idea of the constitution,
46:36
there are always factions. Factions inevitably arise, and they compete with each
46:40
other, and they compete with each other politically, and they try to get
46:45
advantage and everything. And he said, you have to mute the factions.
46:49
You have to create mechanisms that mute that. John Locke, in terms of
46:52
the rule of the Judge said much the same kind of thing. But if
46:55
you take that, what it means is that the Constitution itself was created deliberately
47:05
by the framers. However, people think about them created deliberately by the Framers
47:13
to diffuse power because they understood the human, the Nietzschean human urge, the
47:20
power will the power. So if you look at that, the Constitution was
47:23
created so that power had to be shared across states, federal government agencies,
47:30
local government, different roles in ways, no overarching religious Holy Roman Church or
47:37
Anglican Church in that, or Church of England in that. So that is
47:45
the thing they are trying to do when you talk about, you know,
47:49
undermining the Constitution. The idea again packing the Supreme Court so with people that
47:54
ensure that they will get their views, same kind of thing, doing a
48:00
way with some mechanisms, like just congressional senatorial mechanisms that delay rash judgments so
48:09
that there can be debate with these people who are supposed to be representing the
48:15
entire community. And it is systemic. I mean, you've talked about the
48:21
Supreme Court there, but even you know some of the statistics in the book
48:27
relating to the makeup of faculty, right, so actually you know the number
48:31
of self identifying leftist versus or progressives versus conservatives, I suppose would be a
48:38
way of describing it. It seems clear that many of these institutions have been
48:45
completely captured already, and it seems like it's been like this for some time
48:50
now. It has, but it's been a progressive thing since the early seventies.
48:57
It build, you know, it's a kind of thing where again,
49:01
they tried to recruit me when I left Harvard to go teach in Cleveland.
49:07
The people I'd worked with at Harvard Law School called and asked me to be
49:12
part of their movement. They described in glowing terms, which then was called
49:16
critical legal studies because that's where critical race theory really got its birth. It
49:22
later within a decade, it became spread through the universities and became called critical
49:30
race theory because it needed to be classed up as a theory. It's an
49:35
academic theory in that and so that's where it started. And then they admitted
49:40
when I got to the end of the discussion, I said, what it's
49:44
really about, and they said, well, it's Marxism and socialism. You
49:47
love it. And I said, I won't do that. I just won't
49:55
do that. And it just then the civil rights, the bad side of
50:04
the civil rights, the bad and good side of the civil rights, affirmative
50:07
action, which I believe in to a degree. What happened over the next
50:14
the push to repopulate the university and education with more diverse individuals, women,
50:22
and minorities. What happened over the next decade and a half to two decades
50:30
was a massive push to hire people who were diverse and be inclusive in that
50:38
and that. And that's really something that happened because they it was a concerted
50:44
movement that began gradually took hold more as more the population, the universities were
50:53
increasingly populated by previously marginalized let's just say that previously marginalized people an interest who
51:00
came in with a specific political agenda, and so they were populated with that.
51:09
It took twenty years or so and then the numbers reached the point where
51:16
the critical race theory. Old friend stated to me it was at a conference
51:22
I was doing that. It was a war of attrition. They had been
51:27
fighting that, which means putting their troops in place, putting their soldiers in
51:30
administrative and teaching positions so that they were able to influence and increasingly control the
51:38
educational institutions. And by the mid to late nineties it was basically in place
51:46
and in large skill and then since early the early two thousands it really has
51:54
taken over. Yes, there's clearly been a wholesale transformation to the system.
52:00
Touched on the demographics there in terms of the change the changing demographics of of
52:06
the student population. One of the other really interesting topics that you touch on
52:09
in the book is this the proliferation of different technical disciplines. So actually we
52:16
have a much larger amount of much narrower courses, so that when people study,
52:24
they have a very very specific subset of knowledge that they go very deep
52:30
on, but they lack the ability to go broad and to integrate a more
52:35
coherent worldview, which I see, which seems to me is just as just
52:39
as damaging ultimately as some of the other things that we've touched on. Yeah.
52:45
It, yes, ultra specialization is very damaging and destruction of in most
52:52
universities of what we call human studies. Human studies in the sense of the
52:59
liberal, true liberal classic foundational things which I like to describe as the ligaments
53:09
or sinews that high cultures together over generations. That if we're getting the same
53:16
basics, if we understand that, we can talk to each other about that.
53:22
But so many universities just threw them away, and what they replaced them
53:28
with were so in sociology courses, in English literature courses, not in the
53:37
STEM courses, the scientific or technical things. The other side of it is
53:42
they the people who came into the universities through this movement. They came in
53:51
typically through sociology courses, women's study courses, race and society courses, those
53:58
kinds of things, social justice courses. They invented new courses that hadn't previously
54:05
been part of that, or new interpretations or new claims for some of the
54:10
existing sociology course courses, or political government courses and even economics courses, and
54:19
that's part that's been part of the movement. I mean, it's a total
54:22
it's a total strategy, and it's been a factor absolutely, I think coupled
54:30
with this proliferation in technical disciplines. I think that I've experienced this myself professionally
54:37
actually as much as anywhere else. Is the different people with different skill sets
54:44
will have a different language. We're talking about the same thing. Yes,
54:47
So actually they've they've created a situation where I'm talking about one thing and then
54:52
someone will be talking about the same thing using different terminology, and it's completely
54:58
destroyed our ability to have an integrated discussion about what's actually going on around us.
55:02
It seems that they built it deliberately into the curriculum, that's right.
55:07
Yeah, so we need some kind of renaissance, right, I mean that
55:14
seems to be on the agenda, like we you know, there are periods
55:17
in history in Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the medieval Europe where we've had
55:23
great flourishings of intellectual and artistic and spiritual and economic innovation that have gone to
55:34
well, they've really provided the foundations for our civilization, for all of the
55:39
health and the wealth and the prosperity that we've had over millennia. It feels
55:44
like we're due a moment of renaissance. Do you think that the university system
55:49
can facilitate that, Can they redeem themselves or does that need to happen outside
55:52
of the existing paradigm. I think the fanatics the ideal within the university system
56:00
are so well placed that they will not do it themselves. And I understand
56:07
the people who are keeping their heads down because their careers can get destroyed overnight
56:15
if they did speak up inside. But one thing that is happening is,
56:22
and I hate this, but it's necessary, is that a number of states
56:28
in the US are beginning to withdraw past resolutions state legislatures resolutions that withdraw funding
56:38
for DEI programs. And that is very important. Arkansas, I think,
56:45
just did it, Florida did it, Texas did it. But it's a
56:50
growing movement and Indiana. It can be a very dangerous movement too, in
56:55
terms of if the university were actually doing what it should be doing, then
57:02
this would hurt the universities. But the universities are not centers of honest,
57:09
intellectual teaching and critique and advancement and thinking about what our society needs in order
57:17
to thrive and survive. As we said, they're undermining. So they've shown
57:25
that the people in power in those universities cannot be trusted. There are interesting
57:30
thing, there are efforts. And I was just talking to a friend who's
57:38
a mainstream university president the other day, a different friend, and we were
57:46
actually talking about trying to see if it made sense to construct a consortium of
57:52
ten to fifteen flagship state public universities that affirmatively as a group start pushing what
58:04
you're calling a renaissance and admitting the evil that is going on. He actually
58:09
told me he now takes this book and it's right on his it's right on
58:15
his bedstand, and he reads some of it every day. And I'm glad
58:23
to hear that, because I have great respect for him. But that's the
58:27
kind of thing that has to occur. It's a combination of independent governments and
58:31
a very strong thing which I have found. It is like the twentieth interview
58:37
that I've done on this book over the last six weeks, and what I
58:42
have found is that you guys, it isn't the inside academics most of them,
58:52
we are doing it. But there is a very impressive range of are
59:00
standing an ability to discuss and recognize what the problems are and the issues and
59:06
challenges are that I have seen with virtually all the people doing the podcast.
59:10
And so that is to me and a challenge to you is in the in
59:19
the UK and in the US, you need the court. You know,
59:23
maybe you guys can be a really good enlightening range of issues stimulus to help
59:35
advance what is needed because virtually none of that is occurring in the universities.
59:40
I very much like to think that we sit in the mix there, definitely.
59:45
I think that's that's part of the role that we're playing. I think
59:49
part of the other The problem with the university education, beyond ideological capture,
59:53
is that it's become so prohibitively expensive. Particularly absolutely absolutely you can't and what
1:00:04
getting out of it isn't worth it. You know, you go to the
1:00:07
Ivy's I have a Harvard degree. My son, one of my sons,
1:00:12
who teaches of Michigan State as a Harvard degree. We want neither of us
1:00:17
will even communicate with Harvard anymore. They have become so contemptible, and the
1:00:22
Ivys are like and every one of them. Somebody you actually should contact is
1:00:30
is Bill Jacobson, who teaches at Cornell, and he has gotten all kinds
1:00:37
of trouble at Cornell because he's conservative. Okay, he challenged THEI but he
1:00:45
also then went and he's still there. But he went and created something called
1:00:50
the Legal Insurrection Foundation. And he has done studies his organization and done studies
1:01:00
on the spread into the medical schools and all those kinds of things. And
1:01:06
he's very, very knowledgeable about about these issues and he's well worth talking.
1:01:10
Yeah, fantastic, We'll have to reach out to Bill. To Bill Jacobson,
1:01:15
that sounds so like someone we need to talk to. You just touched
1:01:19
on Harvard. I mean, what are your thoughts on the situation with with
1:01:22
Claudy and Gay recently and the controversy about her role and being pushed out of
1:01:28
position for plagiarism. She she never should have been from everything you read about
1:01:36
her, she never should have been chosen in the first place. It's an
1:01:38
example of the way for reasons of diversity in the whole thing that that that
1:01:46
universities are pushing some people not not all by far. But there is nothing
1:01:53
in her her background other than she was black and a woman, or nothing
1:02:00
in her background to suggest that she should have been the president of Harvard,
1:02:06
except if you understand what Harvard has become. And it's okay, she's fine
1:02:13
for the Harvard that now exists, not the Harvard that we always hoped and
1:02:19
felt exist. And the same thing is occurring at most of the other Ivy
1:02:25
League schools, whether it's a screwed up presidential appointment or just behavior and the
1:02:32
dumbing down and the warping of the geological warping of what the faculty is doing.
1:02:39
Yeah, you're seeing exactly the same thing happened in Oxford and Cambridge and
1:02:44
other universities around the UK. Yeah, I said, there are parallels between
1:02:49
that, and you know, Canada's going through much the same thing, and
1:02:52
with Trudeau it may even be becoming worse. So, I mean what he's
1:02:58
doing on language issues and think, but remember the language thing is a deliberate
1:03:07
strategy. You control the language. And when they first started using the word
1:03:12
hate, hate speech, hate crimes and haters and things like that in the
1:03:16
early nineties, usually that was deliberate also, and because it also makes you
1:03:22
look at each other. You say something, somebody says you hate, You're
1:03:25
a hater. Well that's a fundamental thing, you know, it goes to
1:03:29
the core of you. And so you say, am I really know?
1:03:32
All I did was say I don't agree with something, Well, then yours
1:03:38
is lamophobic or your anti women? You know all the things. Now,
1:03:45
the only way that you know the real hate haters are all the people condemning.
1:03:51
And you will see this in the bylaws or the things from nineteen sixty
1:03:55
eight in women's the movement expend some women's studies in universities, and then the
1:04:02
critical race theory information that they now screen potential faculty candidates on where you have
1:04:12
to swear allegiance to literally you have to swear allegiance to show what you have
1:04:17
done in the past that advances racial and social justice issues, swear allegiance to
1:04:25
it and promise to work for it in the future. And this is anything
1:04:28
you're being hired for, work for it in the future to achieve this and
1:04:31
so forth. I mean, that's it's loyalty us being forced to commit to
1:04:41
loyalty us just to get hired. Yeah, it's like they're like religious vialods.
1:04:47
I see they are right. No, they're not like religious sellots.
1:04:49
It's their religion. They are religious cellots. It's just they invented their own
1:04:55
religion. Quite fantastic. Look, David, I feel like I could sit
1:05:00
here all afternoon, Nation, and I would love to, because I've really
1:05:02
enjoyed the conversation. But I have one final quote I'd like to put to
1:05:08
you from the book which I loved, which I hadn't heard before, which
1:05:11
was from Voltaire. If you write odes to the monarch, you will be
1:05:15
well received, enlightened men, and you will be crushed. It's very apt.
1:05:20
But who is the monarch? Is there someone controlling this? I got
1:05:26
asked that question yesterday. And it's a collective group. I mean there are
1:05:30
leaders. I mean, you know Ibram Kendy at Boston University. I think
1:05:35
he's making a fortune of stirring this up and keeping it going. Nicole Hannah
1:05:42
Jones, who wrote the sixteen nineteen project The New York Times, pushed on
1:05:47
that her book she gets a fortune in speeches in her book on sixteen nineteen
1:05:56
variations, Not even though it's been savaged as so many wrongful statements, is
1:06:00
being used in many k through twelve courses. You know. So she's making
1:06:06
the publisher, you know, she's making a lot of money of this booker.
1:06:10
But there are organized groups too. Think about that. You know,
1:06:14
hundreds and hundreds of millions of the University of Florida just said they had to
1:06:18
cancel their DEI programs. That means they get five million dollars they were paying
1:06:26
in salaries to their DEI personnel. Just one university, and there are a
1:06:32
number of University of Virginia way worse. So we're talking about hundreds and hundreds
1:06:39
of millions of dollars, if not by now a couple a billion or two
1:06:43
going to the DEI departments that are in functional control of the universities. Because
1:06:50
if you get them pissed off at you, angry with you, you you
1:06:56
break their rules, they'll come after you, and they have the ability to
1:07:00
do that, condemn you. You're a racist, You're we can't have a
1:07:04
racists in this university. And the definition of what a racist is is totally
1:07:12
within their subjective, in political and ideological power to interpret. They I am
1:07:17
sure, by no they would call me a racist, and I'm one of
1:07:19
the farthest people from that. What I am as an honest analyst with great
1:07:28
experience in this whole field, and I'm not taking bullshit from anybody. Well,
1:07:34
good for you, and I think that we all need to stop actually
1:07:41
taking bullshit from people on these specific topics. Yes, yes, so,
1:07:47
David Bargheis, thank you so much, author of, amongst other things,
1:07:51
Conformity College is the Destruction of intellectual creativity and dissent in America's universities, which
1:07:57
is out now, I believe. Oh yeah, it's been ound since January
1:08:01
sixteenth. Okay, I highly recommend it. I really enjoyed it. As
1:08:05
I said at the start, it was one of the most comprehensive looks at
1:08:11
this specific issue that I've come across, and I would highly recommend people to
1:08:17
pick up a copy. Professor Farnheiser, I thank you so much for your
1:08:21
time. It's been a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you, Bert.
1:08:26
I appreciate it. I enjoyed it very much. Good stuff. Okay,
1:08:30
I've been been riving at UK column. Have a great afternoon.